Essay on Communicaton between animals and humans

An infant’s first utterances come in the form of babbling. These consonant-vowel syllable vocalizations replace single phoneme, primary vowel, vocalizations. Around the ages of 4 to 6 months or so, children in all cultures begin to babble. Babbling is the beginning stage of acquiring language; when children begin generating sequences of vowels and consonants if they are acquiring spoken language, or producing hand gestures if they are acquiring signed language. (Mihalicek & Wilson, 2011, p. 323) “Babbling has a social element and an infant will vary the volume, pitch, and rate of babbling to attract attention.” (Owens Jr, 2016, p. 92). As an infant matures the babbling they produce will develop into longer sequences and extended individual sounds. Vedrana Mihalicek and Christin Wilson in Language Files: Materials for an Introduction to Language and Linguistics state that “Some linguists assume that babies babble to practice some muscle coordination needed to produce language” (p. 323). One would be correct in assuming this as an infant’s tongue is relatively larger compared to the size of the oral cavity.

It is believed that babies develop language when they are in the utero and it continues throughout their lifetime. By twelve weeks old, babies may register the sounds they can hear and at the same time make basic visual, auditory and tactile mind maps (Karen Kearns, 2013, P.105). This allows the infant to turn towards any familiar sounds and noises. Babies begin to communicate with people around them quite quickly. By two months old, babies begin to make ‘cooing’ and other noises; this indicates the phonological component of language development. By six to nine months babies begin to experience with a mixture of sounds, and often you will hear a baby babbling. Babbling development is similar across many different languages and even hearing impaired babies will go through this stage. They may copy the sounds they are introduced too or beginning to recognize familiar

At the age of 6-11 months babies begin to babble such things such as mama. Babies at this age often try to communicate by actions or gestures and tries to repeat simple sounds that are used a lot around them.

Babies prefer the sound of humans interacting to other sounds and from this, they quickly learn to recognise and identify their mother’s voice. Babies form their first relationship through emotional attachments with their mother or main carer. The first year of a baby’s life is a period of incredible growth, and a baby’s brain goes through critical periods during which stimulation is needed for proper development. During the babies first years, visual stimuli or verbal language is necessary for areas of the brain to grow and without this growth, a child’s vision or speaking abilities might be impaired. Infants tend to have different cries for hunger or pain, as well as making other noises. These abilities show your child is gaining communication and pre-language skills. Infants from birth to 6 months will forget about objects they cannot see however they begin to explore objects they can see and grab by putting them in their mouths. They will also follow moving objects with their eyes and look around at nearby objects. Infants in this stage will turn to look at a source of sound. These developmental milestones show a baby’s brain is developing and they are gaining new skills. From 7 to 12 months, infants also learn the idea of cause and effect, and they might repeat an action that causes a

Babies will try to communicate through body language as they do not yet have the capability to converse.

Any beautiful morning could be accompanied by the sounds of birds chirping, dogs barking, or owls hooting; however, is this just sound, or is this a way of communication that we simply cannot understand? Are animals communicating with each other or are they simply expressing their feelings and instincts? One would find that what may seem like just background noise is much more complex than originally thought. Of help prove this argument, three articles were collected which go into detail regarding many cases of animal sounds were found to be much more systematic. From an article exploring the intricate calls of birds when near predators, to the possibility that killer whales can learn the calls of other whales and even the fact that mathematical

Animal communication has become really mainstream these days as more folks are aware of telepathic communication between humans and animals. They know their animals have secret lives, thoughts, feelings and wisdom. And that brings them to us, the Animal Communicator professionals, who are trained to be able to hear and understand them, to communicate with them so they share their innermost thoughts.

Animal’s People is a wonderful book written by Indra Sinha about the struggles of the city of Khaufpur 20 years after a chemical leak from a local factory. The toxins have made the population sick and are continuing to affect every day life, especially in regards to the population’s health. Animal, a boy with a damaged spine, gets involved with local activists trying to hold the company responsible for the leak. Zafar, the leader of the activists, is a man that everyone trusts. When an American doctor, Elli, arrives to open a clinic for the benefit of the people, Zafar tells the city not to trust her. Though they are written onto opposite sides and they come from different worlds, Zafar and Elli have more in common than one would think. Both

Our basic mean of communication among species and interspecies is thru language. Language enables us to communicate with each other, our thoughts and feelings, ideas and concepts, likes, and dislikes, fears, dreams

Interactionists believe that animals are unable to think reflectively, they act instinctively and without thought. Animals are also unable to communicate symbolically. I would add that communication between animals happens instantly. Animals don’t stop to think or process the communication they are receiving. They don’t stop to interpret or figure out the meaning of something.

Firstly it is important to distinguish what is meant by ‘human language’ and ‘animal communication’. By providing definitions for both in my opening section I will then be able to go onto compare their similarities and differences. Throughout this essay I will refer to the design features of language and by comparing animal communication behaviours to them I will be able to show the extent to which human language and animal communication are similar or different.

Language in animals has been studied over the course of many years. Studies like that of Chaser (Piley, 2013) and of Bonobo monkeys (Williams, Brakke, K., & Savage-Rumbaugh,1997) focus on a non-human animal’s ability to comprehend human language and their ability to respond in a way that makes it clear to the observer that they comprehend at least to some degree but there are surprisingly few studies done on communication between animals. It is extremely anthropocentric to solely focus on a non-human animal’s capacity for human language. I propose a study that instead focuses on the communication done between animals, specifically: the stress response a dog has to the barks of another dog. There is some speculation that dog vocalization, barking in particular, is not specifically communicative, and is possibly just a way to draw attention to something. (Bradshaw & Nott, 1995.) However, other studies have shown that pitch and duration of the bark changes based on the situation they are used (Yin, 2002.) The purpose of vocal communication between dogs has the potential to be extremely complex and involved. Barking in dogs is often discounted due to its repetitive nature. Wolves have not been shown to bark more than once in stress situations. The repetitive barking could have easily been selected for (intentionally or not) during the domestication process. Having a watch dog that barks over and over when he is alarmed is extremely advantageous over a dog that

It is as if one says a human who is an experiencing subject of a life must be able to understand and communicate its thoughts. Where do animals fit in? Do we discount them because they do not speak our language and we cannot understand theirs?

Then, cooing appears when the child is between six to eight weeks old, where the infant demonstrates happy vowel like sounds (Hoff, 2006). At age sixteen weeks infants begin to demonstrate laughter and vocal play (Hoff, 2006). Between six and nine month old babies begin to produce babbling sounds, then they utter their first word around age one (Hoff, 2006). When children speak their first word it is usually as an isolated unit (Goldin-Meadow, 2006), and not considered a major step in phonological development (Hoff, 2006). Children then learn that their first spoken word is composed of smaller parts, which is known as morphology, and that the word can be used as a building block for larger sentences called syntax (Goldin-Meadow, 2006). A child’s first word goes farther then communicating a message between the child and communicative partner, the word retains symbolic meaning (Goldin-Meadow, 2006). At age eighteen months phonological processes develop, in which the child’s speech characteristics begin to transform (Hoff, 2006). Subsequent to eighteen months the child’s vocabulary grows and with this growth the child is able to phonemically represent a sound with the mental representation of every word that possesses a sound (Hoff, 2006).

Communication is a way to interact and share ideas with other humans. All different types of species have there own type of communication from the barks of dogs to the chirps of birds. During the process of communication humans input collective learning. Collective learning is being able to connect with each other in new ways, adapt to the environment without changing genetically, and pass information from generation to generation. Collective learning is basically the ability to share, preserve, and build upon ideas over time. Animals lack the part of collective learning in there communication. Language makes humans different from other species because animals cannot input collective learning into their communication.